Mixed Media Mayhem - #DPL2015 - The Color Wheel

Art Challenge:  The Color Wheel

Journal Prompt:  "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way . . . “    - Georgia O’Keefe

Like any good hoarder, I have a supply of used gift wrap paper waiting its new mission. The rainbow striped piece forming the background of this journal spread was exactly what I needed to face the blank paper in the Week 3 DPL challenge - Color Wheel.  A massive pile of grocery ads arrived providing the abundance of images of fruits and vegetables.  The colors and shapes of the cut-outs reminded me of the delicious simplicity of eating healthy. In the post Christmas return to Weight Watchers, I needed some prompts to reenergize my commitment.  The calendar snippets signify how WW is one day at a time, and my journaling implies I can be what I define myself to be.
I was delightfully surprised at how colorful the newsprint clips became with a saturation of gell medium.  I chose the magazine pics to represent the healthy interaction between head and body.

Mixed Media Mayhem - The Beginning is Always Today / The Documented Life - Week 2

I was happy to see that the technique challenge for week 2 in The Documented Life  was "gesso" because I had begun something that I needed to cover up.

After watching several videos featuring Dylusions spray ink I tried them over gesso and over stenciled wax.

Ummmm...so gesso to the rescue covering up and adding texture.

Now I could add more dye spray and watch the images suggest themselves. Like finding faces in the clouds, I thought I saw two faces.  I used a Derwent charcoal pencils to bring them out.

Still struggling I decided to go with my philosophical reaction to the news of the terrorist murders in Paris.  I had just received a travel ad featuring the Eiffel Tower so I worked on the colors to make it blend in with my page.

 For lettering I embossed cut out letters from a pack I bought at TJ Maxx for $2.00. The letters had a nice metallic look but my work space was a mess.

Still not happy with my result, I decided to add back in some white space, painting my circles with gesso. Gesso over Dylusions always gives bleed through so it took several coats to get a surface to write on.

One of my friends on Facebook had posted about being satisfied with "good enough" not "perfect"...but my final result did not give me joy.  What did I learn?  Reserve white space/negative space. Think about the interaction of media.  Find a good journaling pen.  When I wrote the quotation from Mary Shelley that was the prompt for this week, my Pitt pen smeared.